in)(between gallery shows for the first time in Europe the series “Shinjuku Lost Child” by Yang Seung Woo, prize-winner of the 2017 Ken Domon.

Yang SEUNG-WOO, winner of the prize Ken Domon (one of the most prestigious Japanese Photography Awards). Yang Seung Woo stands out as an major player in Today’s Japanese Photographic Scene.

Yang Seung Woo exiled himself voluntarily in Japan back in 1999 somehow escaping his fate life within the Yakuzas world, of which he was a member since his adolescence years. He decided to settle down in Tokyo to reconstruct his life and study photography. It is at that time that he discovered the district of Shinjuku in Tokyo. Stunned by the social poverty and the night-frenzy which reigns there, he chose to undertake a documentary work which he pursued during 18 years. Seized by the peculiarity of its look and by its black and white contrasted and flashed images, the Ken Domon jury decided to reward Yang; and for the first time a foreign artist was granted this honor by the Ken Domon jury.

The night shots Yang Seung Woo made while his wanderings in Shinjuku capture the violence and deviance of a Tokyoite nightlife society. Drug pushers, prostitutes, transvestites, street children, vagrants or homeless people, they all paraded in front of Yang’s lenses. Yang Seung Woo records abruptly and stealthily the lives of these extraordinary personalities. The photographer captures his images in total immersion, as when he lived with homeless and transvestites, He lived/hanged out for about two months with transvestites sharing the intimacy of public baths and the streets. His documentary writing shows an aesthetic and humanistic concern. The gallery is proud to show for the first time in Europe this series which was exhibited at the Ken Domon Awards at Nikon salon in Tokyo and Osaka before entering the permanent collections of the Ken Domon Museum of Photography in Yamagata.

With this exhibition the gallery pursues its photographic exploration on Tokyo, inaugurated by the portraits of passers-by of Hiroh Kikai (exhibited at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and at the international Center of Photography in New York). The gallery had also exhibited the photos of Tokyo of several masters photographers; Susumu Fujita “Silver Eye" (artist, ex member of Camp, where he worked in close collaboration with Daido Moriyama and of Koji Onaka); Chotoku Tanaka "TOKYO 1966 " (artist exhibited at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography); Takehiko Nakafuji "STREET RAMBLER - TOKYO" (artist exhibited at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography) and Morten Andersen with his series "TOKYO - 20002002" never exhibited before.